The value of Bitcoins has exploded. Again.
FT Alphaville takes you through the latest news as well as the history of Bitcoin, and also we get a bit philosophical about what it all means. Jump in and join the discussion!

Or something like it. We’re not, after all, physicists. Though, feel free to read about the Hubble Bubble theory here. What we probably should be referring to is Hubble’s flow, the rate at which expansion of the universe occurs.

Interesting little exercise from Andrew Wilkinson at Miller Tabak & Co. Having seemingly generated a lot of client interest with some earlier research looking at valuations of key US indices, he’s now extended the methodology to bourses around the world.

For each index Wilkinson has compared a blended forward 12 month PE ratio with two standard deviations of the five-year average PE. Here’s his resulting table: Read more

We are big fans of index tracking, particularly for those cash strapped and socially sensitive large pension funds, and we are far from alone: passive is massive for a reason.

But where there’s a fee there’s a way. As alternative investments suffer the slow zombification of poor performance, active managers have been trying to find a way into this passive game, prompting some elegant demolition. Read more

Car sales are related to economic growth and consumer confidence, says Citi. But wait! The bank’s analysts, Philip Watkins makes the journey to that humdrum conclusion interesting — with a detour through the banks, psuedo-banks, and financing operations of the European car companies.

Even if sales are tied more to GDP than to interest rates — seven in every ten new cars are sold on credit these days. Plus, the financial companies hiding within the automakers have around €400bn of assets and produce a sixth of of pre-tax profits (click chart to enlarge). Read more

Bored with zero interest in the bank? Why don’t you check out the latest in aluminium-backed deposit accounts? You take the excess aluminium off our hands, we sell it forward, and hey presto you get interest rates conventional banks just can’t beat!

(It’s the way the gold market has been compensating for its oversupply for generations.) (Terms and conditions apply.)

All of which is another way of saying the world’s aluminium oversupply burden has created some excellent carry opportunities in the off-market storage space over the last few years. Read more

Markets: Asian equities and currencies were mostly on hold as markets looked to Friday’s looming release of US jobs data. Economists expect the US unemployment rate to have fallen from 7.3 per cent in October to 7.2 per cent for November. Non-farm payrolls data are forecast to show the world’s biggest economy added 185,000 jobs in November. (Financial Times) Read more